To begin ...

As the twentieth century fades out
the nineteenth begins
.......................................again
it is as if nothing happened
though those who lived it thought
that everything was happening
enough to name a world for & a time
to hold it in your hand
unlimited.......the last delusion
like the perfect mask of death

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Amish Trivedi: from “FuturePanic”: What We Remembered Before

﻿

WHAT WE REMEMBERED BEFORE

A face climbing

atop an old

starter motor,

buried down

and spit-taken

ahead of slender

white ether gloves and

parade sheets pulled

over and beginning to

absorb the leaded

ground. Given way

again to

another incendiary thin

sprawl but never

again, a word

that means a

finger tracing the

paths along the arch

of skin near any

finger other than your

own: a set of known

hands soldered together

that even heated will

begin to crown.

Fixtures that break against the ice: moon

light parches a dry throat to

choke and stall out. In way before ash,

we heard vibrations of soil we reached

into, a shaded space beyond your

mouth that gives growth to others.

As a memory

just as it was done before

clearings came. Another sensation that

comes in when otherness vacates. A descent

and catching the hands in an escape

pose, bringing brickarms

to spin into another form so

brilliant the eyes retract into

their holster. Rearranged

to form new compounds

built on the generations

of freedom we

rebelled from,

the glass lip tasted

but prevented from

blistering under a

skin we've already

known. The next

year is always easier

than this one but I

realize I'm expected

to speak in projections

that never seem

to clear the teeth

utterly.

This sequestration, our lungs alighting in

series to develop

a texture its own,

a stigma we designed on time divided. Out pasture

ignition point, the right mixture but rich

with air or ventilated improperly. The

gaze we have again. In

the pressured moments beyond

this one, we'll seek

against and filtrate our

devoured like a steadied destruction

we cannot believe, alleviated

before us. In the summer the

ships go through

the bridge and

we hear a cantilever of

swallowed dusk

reintroduce it to a

native, painted earth. We

were what we ought to

have been all a-

long, not just a

reminder of the room

before the

reverberation. This tipped

another time

without being heard,

satisfied to

fear. Where we were

is against a wall too

tall to hold

us backwards in an

ocean. A dream too

buried by dirt

to carry another

feeling alongside

it. Split along a

vein, adequate again, I

know. This or

any justification to

breathe alone in your

reference besides

the terror that

seethes through

an absent language. An

absence sustained through

notion, anything matter lacks

it collects as prey, a retraction.

If anything that is unseen shows

the depth of another shift,

we'll realign ourselves to be

any different kind of

place which cannot remain

whenever an unheard system tenses and

recovers. Our tract, re-purposed to

begin in seas of

matter— axon, a

being. Let the litmus be our light

ahead. Your back arcing there

somewhere, a little exposed but

I cover my eyes to

unsee you and cover my arms so that I

may undeceive. Say the same thing

you always say to everyone else but say

it to the gathered room. In

memory, speech

begins as a seed

piercing. The things we are begin in

a spark from

a hand and out again, covered,

mistaken and divulged as

certainty.

Weaned hour, deplored moment on

the way to another envelopment. Bray

above a roar

to sound inflexible, really,

and putting recognition

on. Regain

a swollen block where

we will to unknow,

move about the surrounding

spaces. A light out on

a stair

well to

ascertain we

begin again, a glow too

welcoming to speak

through. Though the air

seems to push us, it's

a retribution from sin. After

worry resolves, it

plays, ringing in and over

where everything that

can grow

does not. If

our floods are the same, I hope

what we know is masked by

shame and brings sense back

to the land we settled.

[NOTE. Amish Trivedi has for some time been a close associate atPoems and Poetics, some of his earlier work having appeared in the postings ofFebruary 25, 2011andOctober 7, 2012. In the present offering he steps forward as a poet working at full capacity, to create, like the best of us, a poetry that tests his & our furthest capabilities & fears. I wait to see what follows with great anticipation. (J.R.)]

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A PROSPECTUS

In this age of internet and blog the possibility opens of a free circulation of works (poems and poetics in the present instance) outside of any commercial or academic nexus. I will therefore be posting work of my own, both new & old, that may otherwise be difficult or impossible to access, and I will also, from time to time, post work by others who have been close to me, in the manner of a freewheeling on-line anthology or magazine. I take this to be in the tradition of autonomous publication by poets, going back to Blake and Whitman and Dickinson, among numerous others.

[For a complete checklist of previous postings through January 12, 2012, see below. The slot at the upper left can also be used for specific items or subjects. More recent posts are updated regularly here.]